1. Cheerios This ring-shaped cereal is both healthy and tasty in equal measures and has remained a best-selling brand in the US for decades. Gluten free and made with 100 per cent whole-grain oats , its manufacturer General Mills tested over five hundred formulas and numerous shapes and sizes of cereal before finding the winning combination.
2. Rice Krispies This simple and not very nutritious breakfast cereal consists of puffed rice and sugar. A firm favourite with kids, the key to its success is in its captivating soundtrack ; the orchestra of “snap , crackle , and pop ” that occurs when the milk hits the dry grains. Cocoa and cinnamon varieties add a degree of taste to what quickly turns into an ultra-sweet sludge .
3. Special K Kellogg’s variation on its pioneering Corn Flakes is a mix of lightly toasted rice, wheat and barley . High in fibre and with vitamins and iron added, it was introduced to help with weight loss and colon health. Not altogether flavoursome , many people add fruit to their bowl to make the cereal more appetising .
4. Quaker Oats Before breakfast cereals were sweetened and marketed as a fun product for children, people settled for oat flakes boiled in water or milk, known as porridge in the UK and oatmeal in the US. Registered as the first trademark for a breakfast cereal in 1877, the recipe is as austere as the brand name would suggest.
5. Wheetabix Considered a cereal for adults, it is one of the healthier if blander varieties on the market; chunky biscuits made of whole-grain wheat were just what Dr. Kellogg would have ordered for his patients. Invented in Australia in the 1920s, the cereal is now manufactured in the UK and Canada and exported to over eighty countries.
